The Eyes Have It
by Crinklybrownleaves
Summary: This is my Blake Secret Santa gift to danadumaurier for 2019. She wanted it to include something about Lucien and Jean and the grandkids, and/or them remembering the first time they met. I hope this satisfies! Merry Christmas to everyone who loves these characters as much as I do!


**For the Blake Secret Santa 2019, this is my gift to danadumaurier. Her prompt to me was: Lucien and Jean fluff involving their grandkids and/or remembering the first time they met. I hope this fits the bill! Merry Christmas to you all. **

"Jean?" His voice boomed through the house, and the door slammed behind him.

"In here," she called back, and he found her in the sunroom, amid the perfume of the geraniums.

She had open on her knees a leather-bound album, and was leafing through an envelope of photos. Lucien dropped onto the couch beside her, propping his feet on the garden bench opposite. He ignored her raised eyebrow, and settled his arm around her shoulders.

"I picked up the photos you took at Christmas," she said. "Some of them came out quite well." She passed across a picture of Matthew and Alice, heads together, poring over the crossword together.

Lucien snorted gently as he took it from her. "The real puzzle with those two is how they have failed to notice what everyone else in Ballarat can see."

Jean nodded and chewed on her lip, determined not to point out the irony to him.

She swiftly sorted the photos into two piles, pausing just occasionally to look more closely, and then carefully set to work with a packet of photo corners, arranging the chosen pictures in the album and dating them, 'Christmas 1961'.

Lucien slid a little lower on the couch and rested his head back on the cushion. He closed his eyes and breathed in the warm, scented air. This was perfect, surely. The end of his first week back at work after Christmas, no one in Ballarat had died horribly or inconveniently, and the tempting smell of something good cooking for dinner was wafting through from the kitchen. He cracked one eyelid open. Yes, he was still married to the loveliest woman in the state of Victoria. Perfect.

"Perhaps you should get washed up before dinner," Jean suggested.

He stretched and sighed contentedly. As he got up, a stray photo fell from between them and slid under the bench. He bent to retrieve it.

"Here you go," he said, but then took it back again, grinning. "I remember this one! Amelia in full fury."

He examined it more carefully. The black and white snap had caught a moment that he had sensed but not really seen till this moment. Brandishing a stick above her head, she bore down on her imagined enemy, her lips pursed and one hand on her hip.

Jean frowned. "I wish you wouldn't encourage her like that," she murmured. "You get her so over-excited."

Lucien held the photo at arm's length and tilted his head to one side. He still seemed amused, despite the reproof.

"Look, what do you see?" He held the picture up to Jean once more.

She sighed and peered more closely.

"I see a two year old chasing her grandfather with a stick - and it looks as though she's got him cornered. It's just as well Ruby didn't see you." She shook her head. Ruby had declared the garden was 'too hot' that Boxing Day afternoon, and had gone to take a nap.

"Hmm. I was thinking how much she reminds me of you. There's something in her eyes that's familiar..." he trailed off, trying to pin down the elusive memory.

"I don't think so", she replied. "Her eyes are dark like Ruby's."

"I meant her expression, my darling. Ah, yes, I have it!" He sat back down on the couch next to his wife. "Do you remember the very first time we met? When I first arrived home, when my father was ill?"

"How could I forget it?" Jean sounded outraged rather than fond. "Not a word to say you were coming home, and then walking straight into the house without even knocking!"

"Perhaps you shouldn't have left the spare key under the mat?"

"You gave me the fright of my life! A scruffy stranger walking into the house as if he owned it - can you blame me for being shocked?"

Lucien detected a small smile, which she hastily tried to cover.

"I'm sorry for alarming you, but I think you gave as good as you got. I'd never been threatened with a feather duster before." He grinned at the memory.

In his mind's eye he saw her still, defiant in the hallway, one hand on her hip and the feather duster descending towards his head. He had ducked at just the right moment. He tapped his finger on the photo of Amelia.

"Just like her grandmother. The same spirit." He kissed her cheek and nuzzled in her hair. "Brave, loving, beautiful. She'll go far."

Jean slid her hand into his and kissed him back, slowly.


End file.
